We are a small website that is progressed to just over 1 million hits per month and we would like to start to place ads on our website. Please advise what we should be charging per ad.
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Jay’s Answer: Congratulations on the milestone. There’s no simple formula, however. The better targeted your unique visitors are, the more value they are to the advertisers. If you also have captured their contact information, they’re worth even more (since you can push ads to them).
Ad pricing is influenced by a number of other factors: size, placement, PPC or per impression, how much you want that advertiser on your site (does it enhance/detract/neutral to your credibility), and the reaction of your visitors to the ad.
As a small (<$ 1M) crawler, loader, truck’s diesel engine spare parts company now we want to sell our stocks to international market. Our parts are genuine but they are for out of date models (about 20 or 30 years old) and company newer made an international sales. We have basic website and very small budget to marketing. My questions are:
1. Do I need an open eBay website or may i continue to classic sales with phone, fax, mail or email?
2. How can i reach my potential customers? Who they could be? In which countries I must target my marketing energy?
3. Which marketing tool that I could use within (monthly <$500 with 2 workers) budget?
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Jay’s Answer: Given your budget, a website would be a good investment. But first, are people looking (i.e., doing searches) for spare parts online? You can do this research yourself or hire an SEO person to find out. Your website should target these keywords.
Are there website directories for spare parts distributors? If so, get listed there.
You don’t need an eBay store if you have a website, nor do you (yet) need to target a country.
What you do want to do is determine the cost and rules for shipping your parts internationally. How long will it take? What are customs regulations? How will you handle returns?
I am developing a web portal. It’s name is www.amikhabo.com. It is a restaurant and food related portal. This site name “amikhabo”, it is a Bengali word. It means is “I will eat”. Still the site is under construction.
My vision is – my site amikhabo.com is a fully restaurant and food related portal in Bangladesh. If anybody visits this site then he will get complete restaurant and food related any information of Bangladesh.
So I need some new idea so that I can popular my site.
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Jay’s Answer: What is your business goal for the site - to get traffic and sell advertising? Or to sell for placement of the food-related information on your site?
Consider uploading the information about the restaurants (etc.) you’re doing for free (initially) - contact restaurants to get copies of their menus, and upload them to your site. Make sure you add necessary keywords and address information, tie-ing in to an online map (Yahoo or Google, for example). Also - allow people to comment on the restaurants, rate them, take pictures of them, etc. Make it a social site (like http://www.yelp.com/)
Once you get sufficient traffic, you’ll be eligible to add for-pay ads.
My site is now #2 and sometimes #1 in Google. (www.toddlertoddler.com) So things are good. Right now I have been mainly using Google ads for income on the site. I just recently added a directory and hope to make money with that. But I want to take it to the next level and get big company paid advertisers/sponsors on the site.
My current newsletter list has 1100 subscribers and I get about 300 new subscribers each month. I’ll probably bring in over 20,000 visitors to the site this month. So I believe that visitors like the site.
So what steps do I need to take to get “big business” ads and sponsors? Does it just involve emailing a bunch of contacts at these places? Do I need an ad management program? What do these big companies want to see in order for them to want to advertise on my site? Any help? or direction?
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Jay’s Answer: I’d first suggest creating placeholders for the ads. That will inform everyone that you’re be accepting ads, and getting people used to the placement of them on your site.
Sponsors care about your verified unique traffic, time on site, bounce rate, average sale, demographics, etc. But you’re not selling anything, nor (according to your privacy notice) will you share their email or other signup info, all you can provide are traffic stats.
The easiest way is to sign up with a banner advertising network. Here’s a list of some networks.
http://www.webreference.com/promotion/banners/networks.html
I’ve done a lot of online research looking for a good training course, that I can take online, for interactive marketing. I want to become expert in:
Email marketing and e-newsletters
CRM segmentation and data collection
Web design and usability
How to make the most of RSS
SEM and SEO
Online surveys and incentives for customers to participate
This seems to be a hard course to find. Someone could make a lot of money if they’d create this type of course! Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Jay’s Answer: There are categories such as: aware, knowledgeable, and expert.
Expertise is the rarest of qualities. It’s more than courses. It’s applying what you’ve learned to see what works and doesn’t (for you) over time. It’s being willing to continually learn new things, and research new ideas on your own to develop insight.
Knowledge is sitting down and studying. It’s taking courses to find the tools others have used to solve problems. It’s simple exercises to give you the feel for things.
Awareness is talking about the various problems/solutions, but not with much granularity. You’ll be able to understand the buzzwords and may have some ideas for how to solve problems.
All of the areas you’re asking about are currently "fluid" - there are few techniques that everyone agree are best for all applications. People are trying everything out to see what "sticks". And, as users get more sophisticated, the tools they need likewise change.
I am running an executive search firm majoring into middle & senior level recruitments. I am keen on starting an e- newsletter for my TG ie the HR managers & HR directors of various companies. I would appreciate if you can spare some time in helping me out with the following:
1) Name of the e-newsletters ——– something catchy and relevant
2) What should form the contents??
3) Sample / template if any
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Jay’s Answer:
e-newsletters you send to people on your list, and it arrives in their email inbox.
blogs you publish from your desktop, and people find it by searching online and/or subscribing (via RSS) to your "blog feed".
Blogging software is free, and if you already have a website, you could integrate it into your site. Alternatively, you can simply get started (free) using the software on a blogging site (wordpress, for example) - in only 5 min, but the domain name of the blog would be different from your website’s (and is less ideal).
Blogging is easy, once you get the blog setup. Same process as writing a newsletter. In fact, you can do both. Create your blog entry, and then email a link to it for everyone in your email list with a teaser.
The key questions: name, content, etc. are based on who you’re trying to attract, what problem you solve, and how you’re unique. Given the market you’re in, you need to create a professional product to make sure your brand speaks trust & quality.
I’m working as a web designer for a wireless company. Since October last year, I started taking freelance jobs by bidding projects on one website only.
I am averaging one client a week. To be honest I feel overwhelmed by the number of clients I’m getting. For some reason my proposals are above average. Probably because my strength is copywriting, not really web designing.
I am still working full-time and can barely finish one project per week. I’m talking about websites that require programming or full-blown flash. They are very time consuming since I can only work 25-30 hrs a week, mostly at nights.
I have tried to give projects to an overseas company (India) but the profit was too little sometimes I have to take a loss.
Is it time for me to really concentrate on this full-time? I have a budget of $500 - $600 a week for marketing.
How do you suggest I should spend the money? Basically getting my business in front of more targeted clients. My targets are small-business owners, offline and online. More than half of my clients are successful business owners.
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Jay’s Answer: My first suggestion is to solve your overwhelm problem. If you can’t handle 1 client/week, then you can’t scale up. I don’t know what you’re charging for your website production, but if you can’t hire someone to implement your specification for less than you get paid, then you’re charging too little for your work.
Do you want to work ON your business or IN your business? If you want to do the hands-on website programming, then you’re going to be limited by the number of hours in the week. You can only charge so much for your time.
Hiring others to do the website development makes good sense, especially if your strength is copywriting. Your role would be attracting new clients, writing the proposals, and then passing the development work to another, and reviewing the result. To hire others, you’ll want to find people you trust to do the type of work you want. You might find them locally, or on www.rentacoder.com, www.guru.com, or www.elance.com. You’ll want to develop a long-term relationship with quality people.
As for your marketing dollars, what type of small business do you want to create websites for? Where are they located? Can you show a ROI for your work? Have you asked for referrals from your satisfied clients? Word-of-mouth is one of the best forms of marketing,
We currently own a non franchised Maid Service and trying to create a how to manual. How to market, price and keep customers as well as having a web site for exclusive content and know how we’ve learned. I understand it’s a relatively easy business to start and operate. However, we are finding that a lot of information in many of the how to "start" a cleaning business are very general. We are in a vacation area and a lot of our business is servicing rental homes, condos, etc. We believe we have a niche if we could tell other aspiring and existing cleaning companies how to market and go after these clients. How do I do market research to see if it’s a viable idea.
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Jay’s Answer: To find out if people are looking for this information see how many people are searching for:
cleaning business
commercial cleaning business
house cleaning business
carpet cleaning business
start a cleaning business
starting a cleaning business
how to start a cleaning business
office cleaning business
window cleaning business
cleaning service
cleaning services
house cleaning service
home cleaning business
house cleaning services
You’ll find that there’s mid-low search interest, and high advertising competition.
Before you spend any money on advertising the solution, make sure you can prove ROI on your business (using these tips) and also that the information is transferable (others have followed the tips and they worked for them as well). Then, you have the "case studies" to sell the system - whether it be a book, video, seminar, franchise, etc.
We have recently acquired a small Japanese education agency for study in Australia. www.goshu-ryugaku.com - and we are trying to do some simple modelling of the likely sales once we can get the SEO sorted out.
What is the likely conversion rate of unique visitors to enquiries? And how can we maximize that?
What is the likely conversion rate of enquiries to sales (we will be using dedicated sales people with email / messenger and telephone for dialogue).
Do you think my guestimate of 10% conversion of hits to contacts and 5% of contacts to sales is realistic?
We believe we can generate a good number of hits…but how many do we need to get the number of sales we want?
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Jay’s Answer: It all focuses on your website copy. Your home and landing pages need to be focused on your goal of generating enquiries, and well crafted to help people understand what you do, for whom, why they should contact you, and why your business is much better than the others.
If your copy is great, then you should be able to generate a fair bit of enquiries.
As far as converting enquiries to sales, this now depends upon your sales staff - how good they are at listening to the prospect’s needs and addressing them. Of course, price is important, but value for that price is even more so.
Generating traffic to your website is easy - it’s generating the right type of traffic - people that really need your services.
As far as conversion rates for websites, they generally are at 1% (on average).
To get more customers into your store, make it easier for people to find your business online. Use Google’s Local Business Center to get your business listed in Google Maps, include a photo of your store, a description of your services, and even downloadable coupons for free. The entire process takes less than 15 minutes and you can easily change your store listing at any time.
If you don’t already have a Google account, get one here . A Google account is also a necessity for using Google Analytics, Google Pages, etc.
Enter your business name, street address, phone number, website, and description. While you don’t need a website, Google requires a valid street address and phone number.
Categorize your business (major categories include: retail stores, organizations, business to business, entertainment, transportation, travel, education, services, health & medical, restaurants, government offices, and real estate)
(Optionally) Specify your hours and payment options.
(Optionally) Upload pictures of your storefront or goods.
(Optionally) Add details such as keywords, price ranges, and/or areas served.
Confirm your listing (either by phone or postcard).
The more information you provide, the easier it will be for people to find you: by location, by type of your business, by the hours of your business, and even what your store looks like. Think of Local Business Center as a free online Yellow Pages listing. Make sure you highlight the key benefits of your store to attract online attention.
Of course, adding a listing alone isn’t going to make your business an overnight success. It will make your business easier to find, and is a great addition to an old-fashioned brick-and-mortar store that doesn’t have a website but does want an online presence.
This tip will help increase awareness of your store online. Getting customers to tell their friends and return back to the store is vital strategy for creating an ongoing stream of clientèle.
